Diana Nyad Back In The Water for Cuba-Florida Swim Attempt

Diana Nyad is back at it again — once more in the waters off Havana and heading, she hopes, to Key West, Florida.

The 62-year-old endurance athlete jumped into waters off Cuba on Saturday afternoon, a day earlier than she and her Xtreme Dream team had originally planned, according to her Twitter page. If all goes well, she will swim some 103 miles and 60 hours before arriving in the Florida Keys.

“Right now, (the water) is fantastic and so (the team) has been brainstorming and thinking, we’ve got to get out there,” Nyad said at a Saturday news conference, explaining the decision to start early.

Shortly before 10:30 p.m. Saturday, nearly seven hours into her journey, a new Twitter message from Nyad’s team indicated the swimmer had been “stung by a jellyfish.” An update a few minutes later indicated she was stung at 8:40 p.m., “was treated and continued swimming.”

“(Nyad) is OK and strong,” the message said.

Nyad has tried three times before to venture across the Straits of Florida. Each attempt ended prematurely — starting in 1978 when rocky seas left her battered, delirious and less than halfway toward her goal and twice last year, once done in by an 11-hour asthma attack and later thwarted by box jellyfish stings.

But those aborted swims haven’t deterred her, and she insisted earlier this week that “I’m ready.”